Life, Love and Friends

Here's a picture from last week of Dillon doing one of her favorite activites as of late- loving on baby sister. The baby gets more hugs than I do. She constantly wants to talk to the baby and feel her move and love on her. She still offers names, though they are all of the functional item variety- Tweezer, Soap, Castle- things like that. I'm 29 weeks along in this picture.

We went yesterday to a friend's house, where several other friends were there as well. I was sharing some of my worries about having a second child- how Dillon would really handle it after the new wore off, how I would handle all her questions during those early sleep deprived weeks, etc. I was also sharing some of my concerns about the logisitics of the labor and delivery part. Based on her reactions to my recent trips to the ER, my feeling is that she will want to come with us when it's time for us to head to the hospital to have the baby. I've talked with the midwives about it and they are comfortable with a sibling there, but request that someone be with her. I'm also fine with it, but most of our friends have young children as well, so it makes it a little harder to accomodate an unpredictable event like labor and delivery. As I was talking about this with my friends yesterday, everyone was sharing their experiences with having children at deliveries & offering suggestions and help. While I've always felt that it would all work out and all be OK, I have a more definite plan in mind now and feel like that piece of getting ready for the baby is settled. I have a place close by that she can go to- complete with someone who can pick her up, a house full of interesting toys AND lots of kids around, as well as 2 different friends without small children who can be available evening and night to be with Dillon in the hospital. I'm thankful to have a group of friends with whom I could share my thoughts and in return get such great support from. It is undoubtedly what I will have the most difficulty leaving behind when we move from here.

As for the life part of this- I just have to say-germs, germ, germs. We are a germ factory around here. Dillon is anyway. Tuesday it was a pretty short lived GI bug with her spending several hours vomiting. Last night she started running fever. I gave her meds for it, then she was back to running fever at 3:00 this morning. Gave her more meds, then spent the next 2 hours with her trying to settle back to sleep- "Momma rub my back, rub my foot, rub my arm, hold my hand, I need a drink, I'm out of water, I can't get comfortable..." She finally went back to sleep a little after 5:00 and is still asleep now. How on earth will I ever do this with 2 of them?